In the past few months, companies ranging from giants such as Google to small start-ups have been touting the possibility of interconnecting people and objects - lightbulbs, fridges, cars, buildings - to create an internet of things.
Many say this is a trend bound to hit us all in the near future.
"Some of the things that are possible are truly unbelievable," says Constantine Valhouli from the Hammersmith Group, a strategy consulting firm.
"We've moved from a desktop internet to mobile phones and mobile internet - the next step is buildings and objects, enabling us to communicate with them directly or enabling them to even bypass people entirely and communicate directly with each other."
Imagine a production line where machines alert each other to production problems or bottlenecks, or cars that warn each other about a driving conditions or a crash on the road ahead.